Flipped Tricks from Two Pioneers of the Flipped Classroom

Recently a small group at the Owens campus began a book club on Jonathan Bergmann’s and Aaron Sams’ book Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. These two pioneers of the flipped classroom give simple suggestions on how to flip the classroom and even go into detail on how to create a flipped-mastery classroom.

Here are three simple suggestions that they provide to make the flip easier:

Do not go overboard with editing your videos. They will not be perfect the first time you use them. Their rule of thumb: “Do I need this video perfect, or do I need it Tuesday?” (p. 43).

Burn videos to DVD for students without internet.

Limit videos to one topic.

These three simple suggestions will help take a load off of your plate and also ease anxiety for students who may not have the best access to technology.

Bergmann and Sams go on to explain how their flipped model evolved into a flipped-mastery model: “Flipped mastery allows the direct instruction to be asynchronous, so differentiation for each student becomes possible” (p. 62).

Imagine a classroom, or “learning space” as they call it, where students are working on different activities at varying times. They are engaged because they are doing what they need at that point in time–whether it be a simulation, study group, assessment, or something else. In this model, students are given the opportunity to select the type of modality they want for their direct instruction. Maybe they actually prefer reading a book to watching a video. The authors argue as long as they meet the objectives at the end, what difference does it make?

I feel that I have worked very hard to flip my classroom over the last two years. I’m not anywhere near the flipped-mastery classroom – but I am intrigued.

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A blog where the Center for Creative Instruction & Technology gets together with the faculty of Delaware Technical Community College and the education community at large to start conversations about best practices in teaching and learning.

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